Calling All Angels Upgrade Guide: 20 Easy Changes You Can Make

Archangel of Thune | Illustration by James Ryman

Mandatory Train reference here.

Foundations Commander aims to be the next Commander product for beginners, a series of five mono-color decks with fun, straightforward archetypes. The mono-white offering is Calling All Angels, a deck that gives newer players a tantalizing sneak peek at what they can get up to in Commander with one of the game’s most powerful creature types in charge.

But which cards should you turn to as you start to tune up this precon? I’ve got your tutorial on the kinds of things to look at when upgrading this deck, with a few lessons you can apply to other precons, too.

Calling All Angels Deck Overview

Calling All Angels is a mono-white angel typal Commander precon from the Foundations Commander lineup. With Giada, Font of Hope, one of the best and most accessible angel commanders in the lead, it looks to cast angels, gain life, and spread some +1/+1 counters around. All fairly standard mono-white stuff.

Magic: The Gathering Foundations Commander Deck - Calling All Angels | 100-Card Deck + Accessories

• WELCOME TO THE MULTIVERSE—The perfect way to start playing Commander with your friends. Bring this 100-card deck to the table and square off against up to three other combatants!
• THRILLING MULTIPLAYER BATTLES—Battle your friends with powerful creatures and spectacular spells in Commander, Magic’s most popular multiplayer format
• BECOME AN ANGEL ... OF DEATH!—Hope arrives in full force with Giada and her ability to strengthen any angels you cast. Play a whole host of angels, reap the divine benefits, and ascend to victory!
• FOIL LEGENDARY CARD—Every Foundations Commander Deck includes 1 Mythic Rare Legendary Creature card with a shiny Traditional Foil treatment to command your deck in style
• CONTENTS—1 ready-to-play Calling All Angels Foundations MTG Commander Deck (100 cards), 1 deck box, 10 double-sided token cards, 1 strategy guide, 1 reference card

$29.99

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Upgrade Plan

My plan here is for a mild upgrade that cuts some cards that I don’t like with this particular commander and lesser angels in favor of better replacements. Namely, I want to get rid of some cards that want Giada to attack to give you value, and some of these angels can come out for cheaper options, or angels that have a little more impact on the board. I’m not looking to juice it up too much, just make it slightly more competitive than it is out of the box.

Before we get started, here’s few quick guidelines:

• Reality Fracture is hot off the presses, so I want to find some slots for its angels where I can.
• No planeswalkers. They can be confusing and intimidating for newer players to run or to play against (otherwise, I’d definitely run Serra the Benevolent).
• Each card must have at least one printing that’s under $10 at time of writing.

To that last point, angels are notoriously powerful when you play them together, and the best among them can run you well upwards of $20. But I’m upgrading a precon with an MSRP of $29.99, so I’m going to keep this to a slight budget. At the time of writing, my upgrades go for a total of around $85 for all their cheapest printings, though that includes a card from Mystery Booster Commander Edition that hasn’t been released yet. Some are staples that any self-respecting Commander player should own, but feel free to proxy anything else until you’re ready to commit to it.

Honorable Mentions: Budget Considerations

Before getting into the cards I’ve actually slotted into this upgrade, I want to highlight some that I didn’t include because they cost way too much.

Every angel deck wants Avacyn, Angel of Hope to protect their permanents. Elspeth, Storm Slayer and Exalted Sunborn are flavorful token doublers. Archangel of Thune is an incredible lifegain payoff, though Reality Fracture has given us a budget version to work with.

Bruna, the Fading Light and Gisela, the Broken Blade pair up for a powerful (and heartbreaking) meld combo that’s fun to strive for. Battle Angels of Tyr is a really good attacker in Commander, whether it’s actually giving you stuff with its catch-up combat damage trigger, or just pressing your advantage.

Angel of Destiny has an alternate way to kill opposing players, Angel of Jubilation hates on decks that use their life total or creatures to pay for stuff, and Linvala, Keeper of Silence goes a step further by shutting off your opponents’ creatures’ activated abilities. They’re a little more powerful than what I’m going for with these upgrades, and the sheer number of stax pieces is saltier than I want at this power level.

Typal and mono-color standouts like Urza's Incubator, Cavern of Souls, Roaming Throne, and Throne of Eldraine can all charge up what the deck does.

Generous Gift

Suggested Cut:

I’d much rather give my opponent an elephant token than a clue token in most situations, since you’re letting your opponent get another card from their library. With Fateful Absence, you’ve burned a card to deal with a problem, but you may have also just given your opponent easier access to their next threat. Generous Gift’s token is usually called upon for a chump block, which absolute won’t matter against your fliers.

Path to Exile

Suggested Cut:

The deck already has a Swords to Plowshares, but let’s add Path to Exile. You lose the enchantment removal of Destroy Evil, but it’s cheaper and hits more creatures, plus exile removal handles most non-commanders permanently.

Kindred Judgment

Suggested Cut:

What I don’t like about Austere Command in this deck is that the creature sweeping modes either kill your commander and all your tokens, or they kill your beatsticks. Neither of those is particularly appealing. Better go with white’s new one-sided board wipe, Kindred Judgment.

Resplendent Angel

Suggested Cut:

I’m not a fan of O-rings like Grasp of Fate in Commander unless I have other synergies, like if I’m copying my enchantments, they’re cantripping thanks to enchantresses, or I’m protecting them with Sterling Grove. This one starts off as a 3-for-1 answer, but it’s awful when most of the threats you’d want to lock away have enters triggers that generate value. Can you spell “timebomb”?

Wizards couldn’t stuff every good angel into this deck, so it falls to me to tell you to run Resplendent Angel.

Seluma, Light of Aysen

Suggested Cut:

Seraph of the Sword is just unexciting, especially when you compare it to something like Battle Angels of Tyr. That’s a bit out of our budget today, and frankly Seluma, Light of Aysen may be as well depending on where it winds up. I just couldn’t pass up an angel that reanimates your other angels as a saboteur trigger.

Starfield Shepherd

Suggested Cut:

Here’s a rules quirk: Metallic Mimic is a shapeshifter, but it doesn’t have changeling. Which means it isn’t an angel until you choose its type, as it enters. So… you can’t use Giada to cast it. Boo, and, uh, might I add, hiss.

So instead, let’s go for Starfield Shepherd, which you can warp in for 2 mana and then cast again on 5. The only creatures you can grab are Segovian Angel and Speaker of the Heavens, but you’ll usually want the land more.

Valkyrie Harbinger

Suggested Cut:

Norn's Choirmaster is a much-needed reprint. It and Tome of Legends are here to teach you about sequencing: Giada has vigilance, so you should attack with your commander, then tap it to summon reinforcements during your second main phase. I just don’t like that the Choirmaster starts to lose value the moment someone has a creature that Giada can’t get through. Instead, let’s keep going wide with Valkyrie Harbinger.

Lyra, Archangel of Dawn

Suggested Cut:

Surveil in an angels deck isn’t the worst way to filter the top of your deck. Since angels have some reanimators, you can pitch chonky angels you can’t afford to cast into the graveyard to dig for more mana or those very same reanimators. Vanguard Seraph tops out at four surveil triggers in a full turn around the table, though.

I’m going to opt for an Archangel of Thune cosplayer in Lyra, Archangel of Dawn to replace it. Sure, it “only” buffs your angels, but there’s so few nonangels in this deck that it hardly matters.

Ob Nixilis, the Ascended

Suggested Cut:

For 1 more mana than Sunblast Angel, Ob Nixilis, the Ascended adds lifegain to the sweeper and an end step trigger to help you rebuild. Don’t tap Giada to cast Ob Nix unless you’re okay with losing your commander or you’ve made it indestructible.

Felidar Sovereign

Suggested Cut:

What’s the opposite of a win-more card? When you’re in the lead, Linvala, the Preserver is basically dead in your hand, since it only has catch-up abilities on its enters triggers. Let’s swap that out with Felidar Sovereign, a card with the same mana value that wins you the game if your life total is high enough.

Karmic Guide

Suggested Cut:

While both Reya Dawnbringer and Karmic Guide are reanimators, the latter has an advantage when you pair it with other reanimators, and that’s the beauty of it in an angels deck. In some situations, you might not even want to pay the echo cost to keep it around; you’ll get more value if you bring it back each combat with Seluma, Light of Aysen, for example.

Reya is almost uncastable for a card that only gives you value if it survives a turn cycle. It’s fine in the grindier games of lower Brackets, and it’s also fine when your cost reduction is absurd, or you can reliably surveil it then reanimate it. I just don’t have faith in your ability to cast it in this deck.

Witch Enchanter / Witch-Blessed Meadow

Suggested Cut:

Exorcise may be better for the curve, but it serves one role, and one role only. And while MDFCs might be a little more advanced than these decks were designed to be, the only ones I’ve included are lands on the backside rather than whole other spells.

Witch Enchanter and its backside of Witch-Blessed Meadow combine to be either removal plus a body, or a land, which makes it kind of like three cards in one. Plus as a creature on the front face, you can reanimate it.

Heliod’s Intervention

Suggested Cut:

I like the modality and flexibility of Heliod's Intervention compared to Angel of the Ruins. Even when you consider plainscycling, the angel has just a 2-mana mode and a 7-mana mode. Heliod's Intervention will remove more problems if you pump 7 mana into it, but the lifegain mode is also relevant to stabilize your life total, trigger your payoffs, or even set up a Felidar Sovereign win.

Herald’s Horn

Suggested Cut:

I hate, hate, hate Tome of Legends in this deck. Maybe I’m just too conservative with Giada, but I also know how I play Magic, so I’m going to sacrifice my curve a little bit for some typal cost reduction from Herald's Horn. The upkeep trigger has the potential to draw you extra cards, and more consistently than the book can in my opinion.

Pearl Medallion

Suggested Cut:

Endless Atlas isn’t my favorite source of card draw in the world, since it actively punishes you if you draw your utility lands earlier than your basics. Instead I’ll go with the across-the-board cost reduction of Pearl Medallion, which would have been in the deck if this product were aimed at avid Commander players and not beginners. It doesn’t help you to draw more cards, but it does make sure fewer of the ones you do draw are unplayable.

Folk Hero

Suggested Cut:

Folk Hero’s card draw is a lot more proactive than Search the Premises. You’re already tapping Giada to cast an angel, and this background makes the first one you cast each turn cantrip. For Search the Premises, you need your opponents to attack you, then you need to activate the Clues you get from investigating. By the time you’ve drawn your first card, that’s 6 mana, plus someone has taken a swing at you. The political angle is fine at lower Brackets, but I prefer these effects as deterrents in dedicated pillow fort decks.

Archaeomancer’s Map

Suggested Cut:

Heraldic Banner is the kind of card I pull out of my collection when I’m looking for the last cards for a deck and I don’t feel like spending any more money than I already have. It’s a 3-mana rock that’s a fine anthem in a mono-color deck. But if you get to drop the two lands you’ve tutored with Archaeomancer's Map, you’re already up on mana. Easy swap.

Emeria’s Call / Emeria, Shattered Skyclave

Suggested Cut:

I’m not changing much in the mana base, though there’s plenty of mono-white lands you could run like Eiganjo, Seat of the Empire. Here I’m just swapping out a basic Plains for a flavorful MDFC in Emeria's Call. With all the lifegain in this deck, the 3 life to have Emeria, Shattered Skyclave enter untapped is a trifle.

Emeria, the Sky Ruin

Suggested Cut:

Emeria, the Sky Ruin offers consistent late-game reanimation, perfect for rebuilding after a board wipe. If you’re finding that it’s out of your budget, you could instead opt for something like Rogue's Passage, which allows you to break the symmetry if you go up against another flying deck like dragons.

Minas Tirith

Suggested Cut:

My last mana base swap is to trade Radiant Fountain’s one-time lifegain trigger and colorless mana for Minas Tirith’s white mana and repeatable card draw. Given the amount of lifelink in the deck, you’ll probably replace the 2 life, and more, any time you’ve attacked enough to activate this legendary land.

The Final Deck and New Cards

Here’s what the deck looks like once all of these swaps are made. If you want to grab these cards for yourself, click the shopping cart icon in the decklist below.

Commanding Conclusion

Giada, Font of Hope | Illustration by Eric Deschamps

At the end of the end of the day, this is still a Bracket 2 angels deck, just with a little more going on at the top end. The curve isn’t much more efficient overall, but cost reduction like Pearl Medallion helps to make everything more playable. And while you’re still relying on your ability to beat down with your flying angels in most games, you’ve also got a card that can win you the game just for having a high enough life total.

The deck still has room for improvement, though. There are still quite a few impactful angels that can sub in, better mana generation and generic typal support, and even some lifegain combos to explore.

How are you upgrading the Calling All Angels precon? Are you taking it in whole a new direction, or are you more focused on raising the floor of what’s already there? Let me know in the comments below or over on the Draftsim Discord. For more from us, don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter, The Daily Upkeep.

Until next time, happy brewing!

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